Here's a CBC Ideas program entitled "Beauty Will Save The World"
I thought that some of you might be interested. The best part, I think, comes near the end, when one of the discussants correlates beauty with freedom, as a sort of painful and/or satisfying vulnerability (depending on where you stand) that comes with embarking on the quest for beauty. I wish she had expanded on that a little more. I know I've thought about it quite a bit.
Anyways, I'm interested in your thoughts if you've got the time to give this program a listen.
7 comments:
It's really strange, 'cause I really want to agree with all things Renamaphone related, and yet... can't quite do it here.
Haha,sorry.
Not that I disagree entirely. Of course beauty has value and can contribute to healing and growth, making humankind better, but to arrive at this realization through the top 3 literary greats (a bit name-droppish) and then just drown in the candy-floss of it all is a let down. In other words 'don't just tell me about how all the cool stuff you read can be boiled down to a one-liner, tell me what to do to activate this principal or awaken others to it (maybe without telling them "oh you must read dostoevsky"!
I know I'm a big cynical jerk right?
=P
Yeah, I hear you. Like I said, I wished they pushed a little further, into what I thought was most interesting, but they didn't.
Maybe this is where it's up to us to pick up the conversation and take it past the candy floss?
How do you think we "activate this principal or awaken others to it?"
First of all I hate seeing my own sentence quoted, cause I have nothing to back it up but a surface listen that I gave to the show/link. But if I were to play along like I knew wtf I was talking about. Which I should again point out, I do not. Well, then, I would say:
To activate/awaken the importance of beauty? I would say do it the the way it's always been done {sort of, mostly}. The only beauty delivery system I know of is called "Art" (broad definition, so: media/communication/language). I guess it's happening, with or without us. Oh boy, I can't really go past candy floss either, not without failing at school! I can barely remember what they were talking about now. =(
btw, I'm excited about art, because I just learned motion graphics today...sort of. I'll try and post.
I would also mention, this radio show you linked is leagues ahead of the thing I made at school today. But still. (shrugs).
Actually I can't post the thing I made so close to the beautiful picture above this.
=P
Ha! I found a better answer than mine. I just read the opening statement, and it seems to apply to this discussion, but with a diff spin. I'll watch more and see what they mean :
http://www.sprword.com/videos/zeitgeistmovingforward/
haha...Dave...I don't really care if you can say anything in context of the radio show or whether or not it can be backed up by anything external to your thoughts. Just wondering what YOUR ideas are on beauty and how it works in the world. Who cares about the radio program.
and sorry about quoting you :) Again just trying to get you to tell me your thoughts rather than talking about those belonging to others.
For me, what's interesting isn't so much how beauty is delivered to us, but why we choose or don't choose beauty as a guiding principle in our lives. I find it so interesting how beauty is often positioned as dichotomous to security, and how this seems to bleed into our lifestyle choices in all sorts of ways.
Anyways, just thoughts. Thanks for liking my photo up there! It means a lot when you people, (fully immersed in beauty's mysterious ways, might I add) appreciate something I came up with.
I wrote an epic reply, but then it vanished and failed to publish.
I ended it with a quote from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia:
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THOMASINA: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you need stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this odd?
SEPTIMUS: No.
THOMASINA: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. this is known as free will or self-determination.
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The point I was trying to make was, beauty can't really save us, but it sure is nice to look at the pink swirly jam. =)
PS. When I posted this quote on facebook, Sky asked: 'Who puts jam in their rice pudding!'
Haha
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